Sometimes when you wake up in your nice comfortable (or at least reasonably comfortable) bed in your nice (or at least moderately serviceable) house or apartment here in the United States of America, it is useful to take a moment to reflect upon how fortunate we all are, by comparing ourselves to those in countries that may be our geographic neighbors, but whose state of life is quite different. One good way to do this is simply by taking in this, the very first paragraph from a Washington Post story by William Booth today:

The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view - the victims most likely innocents.

What might that entail, for example? "In the past month alone, in what authorities describe as gruesome version of text messaging, the two criminal groups and their allies deposited 14 headless bodies in front of city hall in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, and hung nine people, including four women, from a bridge in the same city."

Mexico is SO FUCKED UP IT IS STRAIGHT UP INSANE. That's Mexico—THE PLACE WHERE YOU WENT ON VACATION. Now full of piles of headless bodies, everywhere, in the streets. Try, if you can, even for a moment, to, in your mind, move your thoughts from the abstract concept of "Mexican drug war" to the very concrete vision of walking across a bridge and encountering nine dead bodies hanging there. For example.